Redemption Day
by siggy63
Summary: Long time no see.


Redemption Day By: afg - Rating: PG13 - Wash my mouth out with soap.  
Category: Angst Disclaimer: Not mine and no money is being made.  
Summary: Long time no see.  
Thanks: To audu2, for the priceless gift of punctuation, etc.  
Feedback: Lovely, to siggy. Note: Set post 'Truth' and written for Fandomonium's Voyeur Challenge Part II

Johnson County Hospital Tecumseh, Nebraska 11:00am

He looked at his partner lying drugged up to the gills on the hospital bed. A farmer's dog had taken a dislike to them while they had been on shit detail. Or rather 'Domestic Terrorism' as the FBI liked to call it. The dog had been foaming at the mouth and as there had been an outbreak of rabies in the local small animal population, it was thought prudent to administer a full course of anti-rabies vaccine. His partner had a badly bitten forearm and calf and now had to suffer through numerous jabs with a very big needle.

Tom Colton was almost grinning. He had no love for his partner of the last two years. He was a humourless, sanctimonious little shit. The idea of the odious twit being prodded with pointy objects almost made Colton's day until he realized that he'd have to stay and help round up the damn dog, and then stick around to fill in what appeared to be bordering on novel length public health paper work. All he wanted to do was to get back to the Omaha field office and pick up trying to interest the SAC's secretary in a little off-hours recreation.

The heat in the hospital room was stifling. He decided to go on a hunt for the cafeteria and buy a Coke. The corridors of the hospital were quiet and his footsteps sounded loud on the well-  
buffed linoleum. The cafeteria was nearly empty as he dropped coins into the vending machine. He thought he'd take his drink outside and get some air before he got back to the paperwork. As he approached the large glass doors of the entrance, he passed by a woman mopping the floor. She was one of many cleaning staff he'd seen about the place, all wearing little pinafores with some sort of garish floral print on them. He went outside and sat on one of the low walls near the entrance. He pulled the tab on his Coke and downed the contents in one long swig, then burped loudly. His manners had slipped somewhat without anyone to impress. His career was at a standstill and he'd found to his disappointment that the current SAC did not take well to fuck up agents trying to brown nose their way back into the mainstream

He looked back towards the entrance and watched the cleaner as she rhythmically swished her mop from side to side. Her head was bowed to her task and he could see strands of dishwater blonde hair sticking out from under her bandana. There was something nagging at him, something about this woman that held his attention and he didn't know what it was. She certainly wasn't much to look at. Her legs were thin and clad in worn jeans. Equally worn tennis shoes were on her feet. The hands that held the mop were bony and the knuckles red. She looked like white trash. She probably lived in a trailer park somewhere with a fat bully of a husband and a half a dozen snot nosed kids. Poor cow.

As he watched she turned her back to him and walked over to the bucket that she'd left a few feet behind her and out of the way of passing foot traffic and there it was. Colton felt as though iced water had been poured on him. It was the walk, no one walked like her. He remembered way back, when they were in the academy together, asking her out on the merits of her strut alone. She'd turned him down of course. Later he'd found out that she'd been fucking one of the instructors. Well, now she was the one who was fucked. This day was getting better by the minute. Dana Scully, right here under his nose. He didn't have the inside track on what she and her nut of a partner had done to deserve the wrath of The Powers That Be but he could see something good coming out of this for him. This could be his ticket back to Washington. Christ, it was about damn time.

Colton fished in his jacket pocket for his cell phone. He flipped it open and paused for a moment. Who to call? Not his SAC that's for sure. No he needed someone in the Hoover building. Skinner maybe...no, not him, he'd always been too damn close with those two. Kersh? Yes, AD Kersh, ball breaker extraordinaire, he was just the man. His thumb tracked its way over the familiar numbers. He put the phone to his ear and looked back towards Scully, who was back to swishing her mop.

"Good morning, FBI headquarters, how may I help you?"

A ridiculously perky voiced operator asked in his ear. He suspected she must be new.

"This is Special Agent Colton." He reeled off his badge number. "Put me through to Assistant Director Kersh. It's urgent."

She gave him a cheery "Please hold." and he was stuck listening to Vivaldi's 'Four Seasons' played by what sounded like a tone-  
deaf organist on speed. He watched the mop sway back and forth like a metronome.

"Assistant Director Kersh's office, June speaking."

June had obviously been at this for some years, because she managed to convey by tone of voice alone that the caller was a worthless sack of crap and was being allowed to inhabit the same planet as the exalted Assistant Director only because he was feeling particularly magnanimous today but don't count on that lasting.

"This is Special Agent Colton. I have urgent news for AD Kersh."

There was a pause while June thought about this, then a terse. "Please hold." Vivaldi was being tortured again.

Colton passed the time straightening his tie and watching the ticking mop. The shining halls of the Hoover building hung like a hallowed vision in his minds eye.

"Kersh."

The deep and unforgiving voice of the Assistant Director pulled him from his reverie.

"Ah, yes sir. Hello, this is Special Agent Tom Colton from the Omaha field office. I have something that might interest you." He paused for a little dramatic effect.

"Agent, what interests me right now is brevity. Get to the point."

He was about to answer when he noticed the mop had stopped its swishing. He looked to the woman holding it. She was so changed he hardly recognised her. A pale, thin face with prominent cheekbones that any prospective super model would kill for, arched over sunken cheeks. She was devoid of makeup but then it seemed that she was devoid of a great many things.

The road had not been kind to Special Agent Dana Scully. Bereft of the trappings of career she seemed diminished, a mere shade of the woman she once was. All but for her eyes, they held his with a burning intensity of feeling that he could never claim to have experienced. The only flame that burned within Tom Colton was ambition. He was basically a shallow man. He read enough to appear knowledgeable but not enough to be wise. He ate in the right restaurants and drank the appropriate wine but it was all about the facade. Real pleasures were denied him and joy was never known because his whole life had been lived to impress others.

"Agent Colton, I'm waiting."

He could hear Kersh's impatient rumble as if in a void. Scully's ghost grey eyes held him mute and immobile. They seemed to see through to the parts of him that he had avoided examining at all costs. Frightening places full of shadows and reflections of himself, like a ghoulish hall of mirrors. She was showing him a life full of urgent longings that had given him nothing but ashes. Her body might have been sapped of its former vibrancy but her eyes held a garden of emotion so verdant that he flinched to look at them.

"Agent Colton, what is going on?"

They had been friends once. They'd gone out for dinner and talked and laughed and dished the dirt on their instructors. Back then all he'd seen had been her ambition, which had seemed to mirror his own. He'd been so wrong. Now he was going to betray her to ingratiate himself with those who might get him back on the fast track and she knew it.

He watched her tilt her head a touch to one side, as though she was asking a question. Then she gave him the saddest little smile he had ever seen. She stood there leaning on her fucking mop, waiting for him to say the words that would have a small army of law enforcement officers descend upon her and she was smiling at him. He couldn't look at her anymore it was too hard, it hurt him someplace so deep he hadn't imagined it even existed before this moment. He turned away from her. He couldn't do this with those goddamned eyes on him, he couldn't do...

"Colton!"

Kersh's voice cut through the static in his head.

"Yes sir?"

"I want an explanation, Agent. What is the purpose of this call?"

Colton felt something shift someplace inside him. Something fundamental slowly made itself known and it was a revelation. He felt as though he was on the edge of a precipice about to step off into the unknown. He closed his eyes and jumped.

"I'm sorry, sir. I made a mistake." He gasped as he said the words then hastily disconnected the call before he could get the benefit of AD Kersh's reply.

So, this it what being noble felt like, terrifying and liberating all at the same time. He looked back to Scully with a new light in his eyes. The mop and bucket were still there but she had vanished. She'd gone before he could show her this new side to himself. She had gone thinking him a Judas. He knew she'd be packing up her few belongings and would disappear once more, maybe with Mulder. He hoped so. He didn't like the thought of her being out there alone.

Colton stood up and tossed his empty can into a trash bin. The air felt fresher now. In the back of his mind he wondered about what his SAC was going to do to him when he got back to Omaha. No doubt Kersh would be informing him of their little chat. Somehow it didn't seem to matter as much anymore.

When he got back to his partner's room he found the man awake.

"Where have you been?"

"I went to get some air...I met an old friend from the academy." Colton sat back down on the uncomfortable plastic chair and picked up the thick sheaf of forms.

"Jesus, more FBI agents, just for a rabid dog?"

"She's not with the bureau anymore." Colton smiled and took his pen from his pocket, "She's moved on to better things." He looked at the page in front of him. "How do you spell 'ferocious'?"

The End 


End file.
